The Demand for Student-Athlete Labor and the Supply of Violations in the NCAA

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) acts as a cartel with monopsony power in the market for student-athletes. This paper models the demand for student-athlete labor using a Mill-Edgeworth-Marshall reciprocal demand model. The reciprocal demand translates into a supply of violations (or cheating) on the NCAA cartel agreement. A theoretical foundation for this simultaneous system is created and an empirical model is estimated using a maximum likelihood estimator on violations data from Division IA basketball, baseball, and football programs from 5 conferences. Results suggest market power is significant in explaining some of the variation in the supply of violations. Since detecting and deterring cheating is costly, information about the supply of violations is useful. JEL Classification Codes: L83, D43, L13, J42